Network Rail have a brief to keep everyone safe on the rail. That includes their station concourses. At Christmas the station becomes a little more dangerous as people let their hair down. We were asked to come up with campaign that got into people's heads and made them think about maybe having one less drink.

Oh, and could we make it go viral? This is the brief set for us by the very wonderful Rob Kirk at Network Rail. We were working on a number of concepts and looking at CCTV footage of the kind of accidents that happen at Network Rail stations. It became apparent, as people in the office gathered around the monitor playing the footage, that these videos got a lot of laughs and cringes in the right places. It was clear that they were the campaign and would get shared and noticed. 

Now Mummadadda doesn't LOL out people's misfortunes, but if it gets a serious message out there and can reach as many people as possible, well then it's the means necessary. 

We created the video below, but then had to seed it through targeted promotion and PR.

Perhaps the single biggest breakthrough in seeding the campaign was the 'inadvertent' hiring of a page 3 model, with good relations with the UK's most popular newspaper, The Sun. Lucy Collet was our model for the simple poster that was displayed on station concourses. No one really looks at posters as they rush for their train, but getting her appearance to be covered by The Sun and the video link being included, got the whole campaign to go viral and achieve over 4.5m views on YouTube, as well as featuring on BBC, ITV, and around the world including Good Morning America, and Japanese news.

Credits

Created in a previous engagement as Creative Director at Aqueduct Ltd - a mould breaking digital marketing agency. Massive dual credit to Rob Kirk, a refreshingly bold and trusting client, and Network Rail marketing manager.